What

He's 13; she's 5. 

Sometimes I can still manage to find matching gifts that delight them.

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A Child

I've always loved the solid Anglican certainty of T.S.Eliot's The Journey of the Magi at Christmastime. The ministrations of belief, the miracle of birth, the ardor of every pilgrimage...

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down 
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

_

Andal

(After Andal)


The small, breeze-colored day

the design and dance of water

thoughts are jasmine 

and mint

In the pounce of moonlight

what to think 

Yearning summons 

from a distance of days 

The ways of the evening

settle and fly like birds

Krishna, Krishna

Where are you?

I miss... I wish 

to hear your words again 

to feel the kiss of the flute

warmed by your breath


-

Mourning

The dead begin 

to forget us 

call, answer

don't let go

stay under sky's 

umbrella

beat entreaty

speak like echoes

in the new 

and unknown

the strange pucker 

and kiss of stars

_

Sorry

1. Charlotte Bacon, 6 
2. Daniel Barden, 7 
3. Olivia Engel, 6 
4. Josephine Gay, 7 
5. Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 6 
6. Dylan Hockley, 6 
7. Madeleine F. Hsu, 6
8. Catherine V. Hubbard, 6 
9. Chase Kowalski, 7 
10. Jesse Lewis, 6 
11. James Mattioli, 6 
12. Grace McDonnell, 7 
13. Emilie Parker, 6 
14. Jack Pinto, 6 
15. Noah Pozner, 6 
16. Caroline Previdi, 6 
17. Jessica Rekos, 6 
18. Avielle Richman, 6 
19. Benjamin Wheeler, 6 
20. Allison N. Wyatt, 6
21. Rachel Davino, 29
22. Dawn Hochsprung, 47, principal 
23. Anne Marie Murphy, 52, special education teacher 
24. Lauren Rousseau, 30, teacher
25. Mary Sherlach, 56, school psychologist 
26. Victoria Soto, 27, first grade teacher

Together...

I love this.

Happy Diwali Light!


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Meanwhile, over at ye olde claw machine...

The "pick me" line is inevitable. But mostly,  I'm finding the rendering of the Prez strange and problematic...

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39 Candles

Happy Birthday, Big Dog!

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Happy Hero

Both kids have been fairly spidey obsessed. This is is the five-year-old Nu's SECOND Spiderhero-themed birthday. (At had FIVE; oy, yes.)

Nu and her superhero friend.

That silly Spidey--he crashed into the bottom of the cake again!

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All Right

So this is kindergarten humor:

Mama!

(Holding heirloom tomato aloft)

I'm putting out a tomato-warning. 

A TOMATO  warning! 

(giggles)

Doesn't it sound like tornado-warning? 

Mama?

 __

Taking a Fall (for science)

While I was over at a visa interview in Grand Rapids, At was "the nucleus" in his science period skit. His science teacher wanted to show how At the nucleus moved, so he pushed him off the demonstration table... and...

At ended up with a broken collar bone. True story. No, we're not suing anyone.

He's in a lot of pain, but he's such a sweetheart and tries to mask it. 

(Related: This kid is ridiculously cute.)

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Old Things (2)

I picked up from my old house the black corduroy trench I’d left behind. S didn’t have to save it for me, since the house papers are long signed and it has no real monetary value. But I'm glad it was saved. That I have it. It’s always made me feel sophisticated. Miss Selfridges. Ten years ago it cost me less than 20 GBP. I know because I never spent more than that on one piece of clothing.

And although it still quite warm now, it reminded me of wearing it back to my rooms on my way back from the Žižek talk the evening the snow started unexpectedly flower-like and light.

And how you called me on my new cell phone. I must have given you the number because refusal would have been ruder than necessary. Because you asked although you shouldn’t have.

You said—“Are you out in that thin black coat of yours.”

And I tried to act as though it were ok for you to call me on a cell phone. And you acted as though there were nothing unusual in telling me that you were worried about me calling me to check on me on my walk home in the snow.

You said—“How was your talk?”

And I pick from Žižek’s talk the one thing I thought you needed to hear. “Žižek says that if you tell someone you love them then the dominant emotion implicit in that statement is selfishness because you want to hear it back.”

You make fun of Žižek. I bristle. You imply that Rushdie is a philanderer. I am non committal.

We ring off.

_

Old Things (1)

Today I found the song you played me on repeat from across the aisle while trying to make eye contact. You may have played it a hundred times? Played it louder than necessary. Played it back to back with another song I don’t remember at all. Something with Salman Khan in it? Some other song extolling the virtues of romantic love and taking a chance.

Anyway, I found “Mannil” on an old CD copied for me by a dear friend who’d billed it as “SPB Marina Beach Song” because even seven years ago I’d forgotten how the song was sung, but only remembered only that it was filmed on the beach. But although I’d forgotten the song itself, something about the frisson of seeming desirable to you must have stayed with me.

And today, listening to that song from another lifetime, I enjoyed it as I never have before. Remember you, footnote, person whose name I never knew. I’d look you up on facebook if I knew your name.

_

Where in the world is NuNu at 3 a.m. on Friday?

Complaint: inability to breathe, chest pains (from what began as a cold contracted from older sibling).
Stuff received: inhaled steroids, oral steroids, antibiotics.
Patient's mood: manic.
Parents' mood: panicked. (Where did the weekend go?)

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Amma

Called Amma to find out that she'd been sick and feverish for two days.

Sick since she got home from Benares; since she bathed in the Ganges with its famed sin-eliminating waters and decomposing corpses downstream.

She said she only meant to take a token dip but ended up doing nine. She said she swallowed some of the water.

In the last month two childhood friends have told me that their mothers died--one six years ago and C did not make it back to the funeral, the other one month ago on account of which S wasn't celebrating her birthday this month. I loved these "Aunties"--I loved their food, their style, their staunch support of their daughters. I yearn for a chance to tell them this.

I wonder when I'll see my own Amma again.

The kids called Amma this morning to yell "Get well soon, Ammama."

It's only been two months since I was in India.


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An Interesting Lesson Plan...

Last week, when the UT campus was evacuated after a bomb threat, English professor Snehal Shingavi followed the news as many of us did: on Twitter. Like thousands of students, faculty, and staff, Shingavi turned to social media for updates on the situation.

But he also did something unusual. In a tweet, he invited everyone to talk about it.

Not long after the University noted publicly that the man who called in the bomb threat had a “light Middle Eastern accent,” Shingavi issued an open invitation to attend his class on Islamophobia. “Did UT have to say ‘middle eastern accent’ as if that told anyone anything about the bomb threat?” he tweeted.

More here.

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Cosmopolitan Vista

Not another Slumdog Millionaire. The San Francisco South Asian Film Festival is full of surprises.

The festival also showcases "Herman's House." Director Angad Bhalla is South Asian, but the film is about an African American prisoner imagining his dream house with the help of a Caucasian artist. Unusual subject for a South Asian? Not really, Bhalla says. "We rarely wonder why a white filmmaker makes a film about South Asia, or anywhere else, because we assume they have a valid opinion on the subject."

_

Happy Camper

(Not.)

I spent the hours
between 11:30 p.m.
and 4:30 a.m.

in a sleeping bag
in a tent
in the backyard

because the other doggies
were so excited/insistent.
Do I have to do it again ?

_

Where to start?

From Sonia Faleiro's article in the NYT For India's Children, Philanthropy Isn't Enough:

What’s most galling about this corrupt behavior is the fact that the current government is making an unprecedented effort to confront poverty. In 2011, according to a World Bank report, India spent over 2 percent of its gross domestic product on poverty alleviation. Over the past 11 years, India’s government has sought to provide free midday school meals, a guarantee of 100 days of employment annually to the rural poor and free primary education. But endemic corruption, from the very top down to the ground level, prevents them from being implemented effectively. A lack of transparency and a leakage of subsidies to the nonpoor means that poverty isn’t falling nearly as fast as it should be.

The free hot meal is the reason Meena goes to school. But her teachers routinely skip school, three days a week. When teachers don’t come, the school stays shut, and there’s no meal. A well-funded, well-intentioned program created to educate and feed poor children fails on both counts: Meena not only learns nothing, she also goes hungry.

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Time Out (But Cute!)

_

Shiny New Middle School

Dancer. 

Once, twice

Your place is inside someone.
the closing of their heart
a landscape scaled to story

what if you knew everything
About why my sister looks like
my sister, the slap of silence;

the beating that is the phone ringing
The lament of memory in all
the half-remembered childhoods

what if those habits are only errands
dead from scorn; like butter asking
to be left out, sleepy in the sunlight

_

Dropping Nu off at school this morning,
I saw a woman in the opposite lane
I guess she'd just dropped her kids off?

Her face was scrunched up, red, angry.
She was sobbing. She wore a scarf
on her head that sat flat like she had no hair.

I instantly know what her story is
Imagine I know how she feels
about dropping her kids off at school

About the rest of us undeserving fools
who don't bother thinking about
school drop offs next year

Although we probably should.
I want to be told what to do for her
Big A says, it's not about you.

_

To Saginaw, to Saginaw

First cross-country meet of the season. You can tell At by his radioactive green shoes. And the red inhaler he pulls out as he runs his ten-minute mile. So proud of that kid.

It took us an hour to get to Saginaw. I still feel guilty that Big A needs to drive that far and back every  single work day...

_

Today is an animal

Today is an animal
borrowed and sad
done by ten
but going still--
like dead chicken
bamboo shoot

Sun weaned although
It might kill us still
so large and new this
gray maze of morning
sawing through residue
the fixed broadcast eye

_

Ready for College

Nu with kids and college kids

_

Grow

Farmers' Market Stylings

_

Sunshine

_

Thursday's Tales

First full day of kindergarten.

Nu survived and thrived. Then the perfect first day got muddied by not getting on the school bus home--her apologetic teacher said she'd been overwhelmed and had messed up.

We all took a deep breath, dried the tears (mine), cleaned up (the kids) and went house-hunting. Slim pickings, unfortunately. The house in the picture below isn't happening, although I love the grounds and the view it has out in the country...

_

Home-bound

The guarding of the child
like a shadow
dilated smoke

The rest of this afternoon
an absence of centuries
a love scent

The growing clarity

pierced animation

astringent

All the words in the world

waiting, forcing

a fly to fly

_

Guffaw

It took me a moment (or several) to get why this picture of Karl Marx that Bill Clay titled "The only known picture of Marx and Obama" was so funny to my friends.  It makes me snort.

Clint Eastwood reference here.

_

They both start with the letter "R"

I've never paid much attention to the don't-go-out-at-night-by-yourself line. There was always an interesting story as a journo intern or somewhere fun to be or a late night at the library or a necessary grocery run that was too good or important to pass up. I know I'd go bonkers if my kids tried to do the things I've done.

I do take the necessary precautions like all women everywhere. And although there have been a few occasions when I've prickled with fear, I have never spent time worrying about rape. 

So it makes absolutely NO sense that at this particular point in my life, when I'm no longer as gullible or nubile as I once was, to suddenly begin to have fears about rape. True that we're renting in an area that feels a little unsafe. True that I'm sleeping on the first floor for maybe the first time in my life. But it still makes no sense.

Big A wonders if it's because of all the creepy men in women's vagina's lately.

____

Before I forget

While I wait for Nu to turn five next month and start Kindergarten this week, I want to write down stuff as she used to say earlier--just this year.

About how she'd get her Rs and Ms tangled and Ms. Rebecca would become the inscrutable "Ms. Mebecca."

How for years, she used T's for all her Ks. And of how we used to tease her by asking her to say "King Kong" so we could giggle when she went "Ting-Tong" like some squishy doorbell.

I'm forgetting things... I want to start doing this vintage postcard calendar journal with the kids.

Here

I'm singing again
thinking savage
songs separating

Tonight's
bright hinge
muttered, relenting

Our own world
a handful of breath
veined and racing

_

Possible

the gods of the afternoon

the temple of traffic

the battle of the Buddha 

yielding, coming out alright

the siblings barking in my head

on those long trains headed here

_

Voices

Recently, the number of times I've been startled by the sound of a man's voice from the kids' bedrooms upstairs has been legion.

Li'l A, newly 13,  sounds bignormous.

And although he still has my puny wrists and ankles much to his chagrin, the mousey voice he inherited from me is now a grownup boom.

I don't note his mustache--because what south asian, male or female--doesn't have a mustache since they're six months old? (What. Just me? Oops.)

Anyway. If I sound surprised, it's because I was a late bloomer--actually the last to "bloom" in my cohort and expected that my kids would be the same.

Segue to say, I've been trying to get the kids up at 6 a.m. after a summer of late-late mornings. And at that hour the afore-mentioned teen voice sounds positively menacing.

Or cracks with pride as he tells me that his reddit comment got up-voted 238 times today.

Ahem. So when we say some commenter sounds about 13 years old... they very well might be.

Just saying.

_

Week Before Work

Frost sharp as
chin settled on shoulder

looking back
at the pelt of summer

book ruffled
beached by libraries

confiscated bliss
the hypnosis of hope

_

Nu-logisms

She has a freshly-minted teen for a sibling, so 4-year-old Nu sounds like she's in middle school too.

Truer to say she tries to sound like that. Frequently, there's a small hilarious twist somewhere. The ones we're currently enjoying:


REGULAR PHRASE                                                                  NU'S VERSION
"Blew my mind"               -------------------------------------->       It's blowing UP my mind
(EXAMPLE: Alligators in the sewers? Really Nana? That's blowing up my mind!)


REGULAR PHRASE                                                                 NU'S VERSION
"For real"                          ------------------------------------->        For real LIFE
(EXAMPLE: Uh-huh. It IS true. Alligators in the sewers. For REAL LIFE!)

Naturally, we've been going around using "that's blowing up my mind" and "for real life" with abandon. And sometimes people will look at me funny, perhaps because I'm not a native speaker and they're wondering how to let me know that that's not how you're supposed to say it...

_

Show and Tell

Your frown is a silent accordion 

playing down, standing up

standing on fierce ceremony

changing like a carousel

A big tent, this religion

its tenets intense and precise

decorous rules tricky as trapeze 

sharing everything save faith

This is the circus of our discontent 

perched at my waist, sparrow-hope 

and at bottom, on buttered tongue 

a juggle of a few thousand inherited words

-

Scoop

The gossip
leaves tracks
invisible trains
they run all night.

Everything's a window
where--enter: fear;
light is such a small
compass for a life

One day there will be...
there will be something
Today we can just cut
shit out like fingerprints


_

There (and Back Again)

Tired, waiting at the door
yet another rehearsal.
Deportations.
Surrenders--
blur

On folded legs and wheels
we've accumulated maps
for wrongs, words,
and soon--
an edge

I learn to suspect horizons
and they harbor storms
their pennant winds
find us, rush us
clean

_

Stranger

(Kids at school, Big A sleeping off a night shift, My TTR class done) I took a hike.

At minute 1:24, I saw two figures--one of whom had a strange, lopping, unsteady gait. I began prickling with wariness... Till they got closer and I could see it was a nice woman with a headband, walking her horse.

_

Half Empty

We've emptied and packed half the house... the pile of paperwork keeps growing...

_

Dayton Dragons

Found out that they play baseball (not basketball); headed back to the car for some pizza and heat while the other Ohioans in the family pranced around on the lawn in 46-degree weather.

_

Monday Evening's Allergy Shot

... for At, Nu and I went walking around the lake while we waited for him. All it took was one mallard for her inner auctioneer to show.

-

Ginger + Garlic

Knowing I have two jars in the fridge plus the curry powder mom made in the coffee grinder = two nights of easy curry anytime I want...


_

Visitors:

First these two crept in

And then there was even more sunshine

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To Kill a Mockingjay

In 2010, ten-year-old At (Li'l A) told me I should read The Hunger Games because it was postcolonial and feminist and I would like it. 

I'm glad I did. 

3 Great Reasons You Should Check Out 'The Hunger Games' |

www.alternet.org

The story's visceral feeling of rage and distrust is a perfect counterpart to a revolutionary spring.

Still prefer the books, but the movie sounds okay and comes out today.

_

Shiva

You've hired this happiness

for the flowering day

it waits patiently

multitudinous

diegetic

I'll never forget how you felt
green leaves rust-edged
their first voyages
whispers
sighs

As if you invented a beauty,
in a curl of misfortune
its willing trident
striking flint
delicious


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Sex and Stones (on Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone)

Abraham Verghese is a huge talent. He's saved and improved the lives of more people than I've ever even met, probably. And he knows more (about medicine, certainly, but also most other stuff) than I do. The new book--first novel--is an intense, politically questioning, resonant, transnational saga. The emotional yearning and sexual tension in the novel is immense. I loved it.

And I hated this:

In every account of sex, the women seem to sacrifice themselves. In both encounters that the plot revolves around, I wasn't sure if I were reading about coerced sex/rape: one woman has had a clitoridectomy and seems startled by the experience; another woman gives in to the fondling of a man she idolizes because he is in a drunken panic. Both women are younger and less privileged in a variety of ways including social position, education, and race. Unlike many other literary authors, Verghese is not averse to writing about sex (at length, even). So why then is the sex never playful and honest? Never HAPPY? Why is sex repeatedly the ultimate sacrifice a woman can ever make.

What is this shit?

Verghese's novel begins with twin brothers in the womb and ends with the an endorsement of a father-son connection. Whichever way you look at it, that's male centered (for the bros). Which would explain why all (all!) the women in the novel occupy subservient positions as mother figures (who sacrifice lives--literally by dying in childbirth or by neglecting their health and careers) or as sexual objects (those who share sex freely are typed as servient sex workers or literal servants; alternatively they are the sullied/undeserving siren who betrays).

Can it get worse?

Yes. Wait till the women die--in honest-to-goodness childbirth or of consumption. Some punitively patriarchal novelist could have written this... in the 19th century. I won't think about the acrobatic coincidences and biblical / spiritual / numerological rationalizing that occurs in the book--Verghese's writing can compensate for most of that. If there had just been one female character I could identify with or even one (one!!) female colleague who wasn't subject to elaborate sexualization and with whom the male characters had a respectful relationship, I'd have bought the book.

With more than just my money.

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Name Changer

Just now, from across another world (I'm heart-deep in an Abraham Verghese novel, about which more later), I heard the kids cheering their dad on as he got his bike ready for the hour-long ride to work tomorrow. "Go dad, GO~Go dad, GO." I could barely recognize their voices.

Baby A (4) doesn't sound like a baby or a toddler, she sounds like a grown kid.

Li'l A (12) doesn't sound little, and the amusingly high voice he seemed to have inherited from me has faded into a sound that's the drawl of a 24-year-old reddit denizen.

Renaming time. Henceforth, Li'l A is "At" and Baby A is "Nu."

So it is written.

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New neck of the woods

It's completely out of character in that I was born and bred a city kid and will never go camping in my life (if I can help it--all bets off in the zombie apocalypse). BUT I love this house miles from nowhere, nearly an hour from work, and miles down a dirt road. Big A doesn't believe me when I say I'd live there happily.

But the views are incredible. It's kind of a good thing, I suppose, that no moves are imminent since Big A still doesn't know where his workplace will be...

Because a 17-year-old shouldn't be shot to death for "looking suspicious"

Read Michael Skolnik's piece on race profiling.


Sign the justice for Travon Martin petitions at change.org and the signon.org.


Call someone.


Make a noise.


Cry.

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